The hot and cold Xmas/NY break

[Scarlett]

Another thing to note about Montego Bay and Jamaica in general is the almost complete disregard for road rules.

- Most motorbikes are ridden by young men wearing no protective gear, weaving in and out of lanes at speed.
- 75% of drivers believe speed signs are advisory and go fast. 10% are genuinely dawdling because they might be drunk, or their car is so beat up it can’t go any faster, or they’re being very conservative. The rest are probably okay.
- There are ‘rasta vans’ (aka route taxis) everywhere. They assume they have right of way in all situations and will pull out, or swerve to pull in whenever they feel like it, across multiple lanes.
- there are a lot of potholes, so you need to pay attention ahead of you all the time.

At least they all seem to obey traffic lights.




Easy as!

Noting all of the above, I was not looking forward to my last day on Jamaica, as although I had arrived at MBJ, I was departing from KIN. Part of the good deal on the hire car was no one-way fee to drop it off at KIN. I allowed 4 hours for the drive from Mo Bay on the north west coast to the capital Kingston in the south east. Fair to say it was not a relaxing drive but was competed without incident. Window cleaners infest many of the intersections in Kingston and didn’t take no for an answer when they saw a tourist, so I tried to get in the habit of slowing down well before an intersection to try and not get stuck at the lights. Some got pretty angry at me but luckily they didn’t damage the car.

Another point to note is that where many people are concerned about the rate of murders in the US, apparently they average out annually to ~6 people per 100K of population. Jamaica is ~55 people per 100K and most of those occur around Kingston. My stop to refuel the hire car before getting to the airport was pretty quick.

There is a north-south toll road for about 70KMs through the middle of the island. The toll was about AUD20 but well worth it for a good standard of road.

 

[Scarlett]

The last thing to note is that the KIN airport is set on an island out in the bay and is linked to Kingston by a 4Km long causeway that appears to have been built as a protective barrier wall of rock and then the road.

Looks like this when driving on it:


and like this from the air on departure:

 

[Scarlett]

KX603 KIN-GCM
B737-MAX8
VP-CIZ
Schedule dep. 1430 Actual. 1629
Schedule arr. 1545 Actual. 1724

Hand up if you’ve flown on Cayman Airways?

They appear to have a fleet of four new Max8’s for their international schedule and some smaller aircraft for their domestic inter-island operations.

KIN airport is smaller than MBJ and appears to have about a third of the traffic, with most tourists flying into and out of the northerly port. It resembles a big shed! There were counters open for AA, B6, AC and CM, then I saw where I needed to go:


! Sir Turtle Club beats Veolcity means fast or QFF any day.

I could have chosen to fly out of MBJ but that would have meant a transit via the US. Best case MIA, but the cheaper options were actually via New York or DC airports at four hours each way. For the same cost as the connection I chose the one hour direct flight to Grand Cayman, but unfortunately it only departed from KIN, not MBJ. Hence the drive.

Check in was easy. I’d paid $10 for a ‘preferred’ seat hoping that might be the more lightly loaded area of the plane, but as it was a full flight, every seat was taken.

After the check-in I changed my Jamaican dollars to Cayman Islands dollars and joined the queue to get into immigration/security.


Outbound immigration appeared to be a cursory check of the passport against the boarding pass at a little stand, rather than the usual booths. No computer entry or anything, then directed to security. Which was hopeless. So slow, no directions, one person at the nude-o-scope scanner so every time it flagged something they’d do a secondary check and everyone just had to wait. US paranoia has infected Jamaica and all shoes had to be taken off.

After about 20 minutes, it was upstairs to one large ‘departure lounge’ part of the shed. This is where everyone waited for their flight rather than at the gates.


I had a coffee and snack from a token cafe and waited as my flight was delayed by two hours. After a while I decided to go for a stroll to the gates to see why the direction was to wait in the departure lounge. The answer is because there seemed to be only a single pier, sort of like T4 at MEL, but with no chairs or waiting space at the gate areas. I just went and waited at a window along the pier and no one told me to leave. Soon enough, my inbound aircraft arrived. (Note that the windows were quite dark blue)


Opposite that gate an Air Canada 737Max had also arrived. Behind the tail of this aircraft is the ‘departure lounge’ waiting area.

Lots of dark cloud around the hills in the background.

This is what the pier looked like inside:


Then the issue with no individual gate lounges. This is looking down to where both the KX and the AC flights were waiting to board at about the same time.


It got pretty crowded down there.

 

[Scarlett]

I mentioned it in the ‘No show…’ thread, but whilst waiting in the pier I was opposite an AA gate for a flight to MIA. They pretty much completed boarding when I arrived but the gate agents were fussing to find the last few pax.

Post in thread 'What to do about noshows?'

Yesterday at 4:19 AM

@Archipelago, I wouldn’t have thought bags would be placed back onboard once offloaded. Those people should consider themselves very lucky.

I saw this happening yesterday at KIN airport. Whilst waiting for boarding to start I was standing next to an AA boarding gate for a flight to MIA (B737). The gate agents were chasing and paging 3 failed to board pax (or groups of pax). One lady turned up almost straight away. Another lady then turned up about two minutes later looking very sheepish. The third name, not seen. The agents were all yelling and had started getting the bags off, as...

• Scarlett

In the end they had the bags offloaded and departed minus 1 pax. But it created seemingly significant extra work for the gate agents.

 

[RooFlyer]

What I didn’t see anywhere, was any evidence of cricket. No playing grounds, nothing being shown on tvs, no signs. It was all American sports. See also, decline of the West Indies as a cricketing force.

One of my neighbours is a former test cricketer. All the tall, big blokes who used to be WI fast bowlers now do basketball, for more $$ and less effort.

Then the internet took care of the rest.

Another point to note is that where many people are concerned about the rate of murders in the US, apparently they average out annually to ~6 people per 100K of population. Jamaica is ~55 people per 100K and most of those occur around Kingston. My stop to refuel the hire car before getting to the airport was pretty quick.

I spent 2 nights in Kingston for some research. Used a hotel car (expensive!) to get to research place and back and never ventured out of the hotel otherwise.

 

[drron]

I was in Kingston in 2007 for the ODI World Cup. My son and I walked around Kingston without problems but we were warned of no go areas which we avoided. The folks were friendly and obviously most wanted to talk about cricket.
We flew into KIN and it looked nothing like your pictures.

 

[Scarlett]

Sorry, I’m getting sidetracked here.
KX603…

After we boarded a ‘Retro-Blue’ pulled in alongside.


Standard B737 cabin with 3-3 layout in whY and as I said previously, seemed completely full. Of course just being near the USA this meant the overhead bins were full and there was an element of faff whilst everyone tried to make it work.

Normal pushback and a quick taxi down to the runway and we were off.


It was only a one hour flight and the crew served some basic drinks. I don’t recall a snack but maybe a token packet of nuts may have been offered.

On approach for GCM there was a view out to George Town, the capital of the Cayman Islands.


We had landed just after a BA B777 and saw it taxiing in. I was hoping we’d be able to get to the gate and off before the bulk of those pax otherwise it might be a long wait at immigration/customs.

We parked beside a sister ship Max8. I do like the livery, which is using the Caymans imagery from their flag. There’s also Sir Turtle represented proudly on the forward fuselage.


Some info at baggage claim.


Immi took about 5 minutes and customs had a couple of questions about what my large green bag was (golf clubs) and what was in there, then it was outside to the rental car zone. GCM is clearly a good airport because not a single person yelled ‘taxi’ at me.

I’d booked through a different consolidator called CarFlexi for this booking and the vehicle was supplied by Europcar. Their shed was hidden around behind the other brands. I should note that whilst waiting at KIN for my delayed flight I’d found their (Europcar GCM) phone number, confirmed that number was active on WhatsApp and then messaged them to say I’d be about two hours late. They’d responded and asked for an update when we were departing as well as a copy of my license, so when I arrived at the branch everything was ready. Again, I’d booked a small (economy) sized car, but they gave me this:

Only 300 miles on the clock.

I was a little concerned the next day when I saw the price of petrol was over $5 (Cayman dollars), which converts to about AUD10. I have just looked it up though and that price may be per gallon. 1 imperial gallon = 4.5 litres, so should actually be cheaper than back home when I fill it up to return it.

 

[Scarlett]

The Cayman Islands are a British Overseas Territory and so all official buildings have the following flying in front:


Cash. Yes a $25 note. They also have a ‘quarter’ 25c coin.


I’m not sure what I was expecting here, but I only really knew of the Cayman Is. as an offshore financial hub where various opaque laws allowed the rich and deceitful to squirrel away their squillions. That may be the case and I have seen some impressive mansions near the beaches/ocean, but on the whole the majority of people seem to just be going about their lives in boring normal fashion. The roads are good, they seem to mostly follow the rules, there doesn’t seem to be much security about, but you need to contrast that with random chickens just wandering about everywhere.

Feels a bit like Oahu, Hawaii when you get out of Honolulu. I suspect that is because the majority of people on the island are, like most places, the people doing the service jobs and the work to allow a functioning first world society.



Hotels and resorts in and near George Town seemed very expensive, so I booked a room in an Airbnb place and it was fine.

 

[Scarlett]

Some sights from around the island:



The southern coast is pockmarked weathered coral / limestone either uplifted or revealed when sea levels dropped, exposing the islands.


There were four cruise ships in. These two were moored along the southern coast and then two more were moored near George Town.


Not surprisingly, getting to the

in the centre of town meant fighting through the hordes. The museum was mostly empty though. In fairness it was pretty small and limited in scope, but still .


Sir Turtle is famous enough to appear on a cross-stitch in the museum.

I was amazed at the fact that the Caymans sit as the tiny tips of a ridge between the Yucatan Basin and the Cayman Trench. The x and y axes are probably a little skewed in the way they are showing relief here, but still, an impressive illustration of the local physical geography. (the Caymans are the small blue/green dots in the centre of the model - also, the light reflection is because the model was covered by a plastic protective dome)

 

[Scarlett]

Heading out to get some dinner I saw my first ‘skip bin on wheels’ in the wild.





Disappointingly, in the three minutes I could see it in traffic, it didn’t catch fire.

Please also note that all images taken from inside a vehicle were of course taken by my passenger…

 

[craven morehead]

As I have learnt a valuable lesson from my previous international trip, I'm currently sitting on a break day between international flights (and different tickets!) and figured I could probably start a trip report about this one as it does have some less travelled destinations.

The hot and cold in the title is because I'm travelling from Canberra in summer (hot) to Hobart in summer (cold), then a short stop in the northern US in winter (also cold), then to the Caribbean (hot), then retracing my steps to get home without the visit back down to Hobart. The trip to Tassie is to spend Xmas with family, then heading off to the Caribbean by myself. All up, just short of a month of living out of a suitcase.

In numbers it's:
57,000 Km of travel
22 flights
11 different tickets (maybe I haven't learnt my lesson)
10 accommodation bookings
9 games of golf
7 countries (and one extra as a transit)
5 hire car bookings
3 new airlines
and a partridge in a pear tree, or would you believe a magpie in a gum tree?

In per-ticket IATA-speak it's:
CBR-MEL-HBA (VA Y)
HBA-SYD-CGK (QF Y/J)
CGK-HND-ORD-DCA / DCA-IAH-NRT-CGK (NH & UA J) - my main international ticket on UA stock, with the below indented tickets US to the Caribbean and flights within that area

DCA-EWR-MBJ (UA J)
KIN-GCM (KX Y)
GCM-NAS (BA Y)
NAS-PLS (JY Y)
PLS-MIA-DCA (AA J)

CGK-DPS (GA Y)
DPS-BNE-SYD-ADL (VA J)
ADL-CBR (VA J)

To save people diving for iata.org:
MBJ = Montego Bay, Jamaica
KIN = Kingston, Jamaica
GCM = Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands
NAS = Nassau, Bahamas
PLS = Providenciales, Turks & Caicos
KX = Cayman Airways
JY = InterCaribbean Airways

Pictorially, on GCMap, it all looks like this:
View attachment 422379

Sounds like a plan